Timber Trafficking in Vietnam

Crime, Security and the Environment

Ngoc Anh Cao

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319642796
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319642802
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the first systematic investigation into the problem of timber trafficking in Vietnam, providing a detailed understanding of the typology of, victimization from, and key factors driving this crime. The book first reveals a multifaceted pattern of timber trafficking in Vietnam, comprising five different components: harvesting, transporting, trading, supporting, and processing. It then assesses the crime's victimization from timber trafficking. Thanks to the employment of a broad conceptual framework of human security, Cao reveals that timber trafficking has substantial harmful impacts on all seven elements of human security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political; whilst being closely interconnected, they vary between different groups of victims. Cao concludes by offering five solutions to better control of timber trafficking in the context of Vietnam, which crucially involve refining the current policy framework of

forest governance and improving the efficiency of law enforcement. A wide-ranging and timely study, this book will hold particular appeal for scholars of green criminology and environmental harm.

© The Author(s) 2017

Ngoc Anh CaoTimber Trafficking in VietnamPalgrave Studies in Green Criminologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64280-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Global Problem of Timber Trafficking

Ngoc Anh Cao¹

(1)

People’s Security Academy, Hanoi, Vietnam

End Abstract

Environmental harm and crime have become an increasingly critical issue, of which every single person, organisation, state and global community as a whole should be aware. A great number of threats stemming from environmental problems are challenging humanity’s security today. As a starting point, take just two examples that illustrate how environmental harm and crime threaten the living entities on Earth.

The first is the issue of climate change, indicated by the global average temperature increase, a rise in sea levels and altered weather patterns. As shown by Abbott (2008), climate change leads to a varied array of far-reaching devastating consequences, including socio-economic impacts: loss of infrastructure (e.g. over 20% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world economy may have to be paid annually due to inaction on climate change), resource scarcity (the demand for all three essential resources—food, water and energy—is already beyond the levels that can be sustained at the current time), mass displacement of people (by 2050, up to 200 million environmental refugees and one billion people may be displaced owing to natural disasters, conflict and large development projects); and the security consequences of inter-communal violence, civil unrest and international instability. Therefore, the Chief Scientific Advisor of the United Kingdom (UK), Sir David King, suggests that climate change is a far greater threat to the world’s stability than international terrorism (BBC News 2004), and The Lancet Commissions (2009: 1693) warns that climate change is “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”, putting “the lives and well-being of billions of people at increased risk”.

The second example is a stimulating comparison by Lynch (2013: 47, 48) on the scale of victimisation between street crime and environmental or green crime in the United States of America (USA). Every year it is estimated that there are 25 million incidents of criminal victimisation in the USA, in which about 9 million offences involve violence. Meanwhile, every single day, 30% of the American population, or about 90 million people, are exposed to air pollution levels that infringe federal air quality standards. Thus, in the USA, the total number of air pollution violations in only one day is 10 times higher than the number of street crimes in one year.

Additionally, it is also estimated that there are approximately 284 trillion annual air pollution-related victimisation incidents. This figure is 31,536,000 times more than the number of incidents of victimisation from violent crimes as estimated by the US National Crime Victim Survey. The numbers of incidents of water pollution and hazardous waste sites are also 29,200 and 69,880 times respectively greater than street crime cases. Lynch (2013: 48) comes to the conclusion that “the fact that environmental violence incidents from these three offences alone are nearly 32 million times more frequent than the National Crime Victim Survey estimates should make us pause with concern”.

In addition to its huge scale, green crime should alarm us today due to its illegal profits. Interpol (2012: 3) confirms that in fact, environmental crime is “currently one of the most profitable forms of criminal activity taking place throughout the world”. By combining estimates from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United Nation Environmental Programme (UNEP) and International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL), Nellemann et al. (2014) suggest that the monetary value of all forms of transnational organised environmental crime is worth between £70 and £213 billion annually. By 2005, it was estimated that while international trade in wildlife, fisheries and wild-sourced timber was worth over £332 billion annually (Engler 2008), illegal trade of wildlife and wildlife products may be valued up to £20 billion (Wyler and Sheikh 2008), making it one of the most lucrative illicit businesses, perhaps coming only after drug and arms trafficking (Schneider 2008).

Likewise, illegal trade in timber is worth between £30 and 100 billion annually or 10–30% of global wood trade¹ (Nellemann 2012). Profits from illegal trade in Ramin timber is reported to be even higher than drug smuggling (Khatchadourian 2008). The value of Merbau timber is only £120 per m³ in an Indonesian port, but it is worth £2200 when retailed at an American store (EIA 2007b). Additionally, drugs and wildlife commodities are part of a joined global criminal economy, leading to an increasing probability that “the parallel trades will interact with each other” (South and Wyatt 2011: 556).

Regarding the detrimental impacts, green crime can be even more dangerous than other crimes. Wright (2011: 339) offers a marked comparison:

The effects of TEC [transnational environmental crime] are not only damaging, but are often also definitive and long lasting, even permanent. Whereas there is a potentially unlimited supply of narcotics, there is a finite stock of an endangered species. Thus, once an animal is poached, it is gone forever. Likewise, once pristine rainforest is illegally logged it is irreplaceable and when ozone-depleting substances are released they cannot be stopped from damaging the atmosphere. Whereas trafficked persons can be offered support and counselling and drug users can enter rehabilitation, rectifying the effects of environmental crime can take a very long time, if they can be rectified at all.

As one of the typical green crimes, timber trafficking, as will be seen later in this chapter, is assumed to bring about a host of detrimental impacts on: (1) the economy by weakening economic efficiency, misallocating investments and stealing state revenue (Chan 2010; Contreras-Hermosilla 2001; EIA 2012; Guertin 2003; Rosander 2008; World Bank 2007); (2) on the natural environment by threatening biodiversity, intensifying deforestation and contributing to natural disasters (Goncalves et al. 2012; Interpol and World Bank 2009; Lawson and MacFaul 2010); (3) on human well-being by threatening livelihood, employment, food and the physical safety of indigenous people living in forest areas (Boekhout van Solinge and Kuijpers 2013; Casson and Obidzinski 2007; Chan 2010; FAO 2007; Global Witness 2001); and (4) on political stability by creating conflicts between local communities with outsiders, challenging the proper operation of governments and provoking the expansion of organised and transnational criminal syndicates (Brack 2005; European Commission 2003; FAO 2007; Global Witness 2003; Human Rights Watch 2009). Because of its “alarming pace, level of sophistication, and globalised nature”, trafficking in timber and other forest resources, as addressed by Nellemann et al. (2014: 4), has notoriously contributed to an “environmental crime crisis”.

In brief, due to “the extraordinary extent and volume”, various forms of green crime could be “the biggest crimes in the history of the world. No other crimes have threatened the existence of the entire planet” (Lynch and Stretesky 2014: 174). These crimes are “emerging as very serious global threats that cannot be underestimated any longer” (UNODC 2013: 1).

The enormity of green crimes and their associated issues have deeply concerned a variety of academic disciplines, including green chemistry, biology, medical science, epidemiology, environmental toxicology and economics, that have examined these practices and made “significant contributions” to our knowledge of the modern world (Lynch and Stretesky 2014: 176). Conversely, it seems that criminologists have protractedly neglected the criminological dimensions of environmental harm and crime, leading to a “woefully low” quantity of discussions on this topic (Zilney et al. 2006: 56). Lynch and Stretesky (2014: 176, 181) observe:

Criminology has ignored the changing nature of the world around us, and has become less and less relevant to the problems found in the contemporary world… Criminology sleeps and dreams its long dream as if the world was not in crisis and the old routines practiced by criminology were sufficient.

The ignorance of criminologists may be one of the explanations for the fact that green crime often fails to prompt the required response by governments, the enforcement community and the public (Skinnider 2011). On international agendas, green crime has not been judged to be a priority in the discourse of international crime (Interpol and World Bank 2009). Indeed, among six key forms of criminality targeted by Interpol, green crime is considered as the one that has the lowest levels in terms of both illicit profit and the threat to public safety. Another example of the underestimation of environmental crime is that in Southeast Asia, “environmental crime is almost never mentioned in regional programmes and declarations on security and transnational crime” (Elliott 2007: 512).

Within the field of criminology, green crime in general already receives less attention than other categories of crime, but timber trafficking attracts even less concern from criminologists than other forms of green crime su...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Global Problem of Timber Trafficking
• 2. Convergence between Green Criminology and Security Studies: the Framework to Examine Timber Trafficking
• 3. The Environment and Forests in Vietnam
• 4. Timber Trafficking in Vietnam
• 5. Impacts of Timber Trafficking on Human Security
• 6. Solutions to Curtailing Timber Trafficking in Vietnam
• Back Matter